soy maestra bilingüe del quinto grado en una primaria en tejas. i am a bilingual fifth-grade teacher at an elementary school in texas. and if you'll pardon my language, the NEA has no fucking respect for teachers' privacy.

martes, mayo 31, 2005

ay chihuahua

totally unexpectedly, i'm teaching summer school. i got a call from a friend today at 5 pm, talked to the principal at 6, training starts bright and early tomorrow, and the kids come on monday. 5th grade math, bilingual. so it seems la maestra will have PLENTY of things to talk about as her summer is cut from eight weeks to two (four weeks of summer school + two weeks of various first grade trainings). and la artista will still have plenty of time to paint in the afternoons, she'll just have to stop going out late at night and painting until dawn. i subbed for 5th and 6th grade math for a month at my old charter school last year, doing lesson plans and the whole shebang. it was fine, but i'm slightly worried about expressing myself clearly in spanish when it comes to integers, exponents, and god knows what else that is on the TAKS test.

Yay, I won't be the only one working this summer! How selfish am I? The math will end up being a piece of cake. If I can teach algebra to my Independent Study students and figure out what I'm talking about, you can do this! Granted, I explain the algebra in English, but you can still make stuff up if worse comes to worst. ;)

5th grade math, as outlined by the TAKS, focuses on place value, base-ten counting, fractions, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, measurement, mass, volume, and money. and whatever you call it when you use those four quadrants and coordinate pairs.